TL;DR The government's Impact Assessment calculates that this Bill will cost British businesses over £2billion to implement. By its own admission, 97 per cent of the 24,000 businesses in scope, are a low risk of having illegal or harmful content on their systems. Only 7-800 are likely to be high risk, and the real target, the big global platforms, only number around half a dozen. It is hard to see how the draft Bill of May 2021 could be justified on this basis. The Bill should focus on the real aim of tackling the global mega-platforms, and the high risk issues like child sexual abuse. For 97 per cent of the 24,000 small British businesses, there is no evidence that they entail any risk and the cost and regulatory effort is disproportionate to the aims.

Read more: 2 billion cost to British businesses for Online Safety Bill

TL;DR Key decisions will be taken behind Whitehall facades, with no checks and balances. The entire framework of the Bill is loosely defined and propped up by Henry VIII clauses that allow the Secretary of State (DCMS and Home Office) to implement the law using Statutory Instruments. This means that Ministerial decisions will get little or no scrutiny by Parliament. This will include crucial decisions about content to be suppressed and compliance functions required of Internet services. Standards for automated detection of illegal content will be determined by the Home Secretary. The concern is whether these powers could ever be used to block lawful but inconvenient speech.

Read more: Online Safety Bill: Ministers to get unprecedented powers over speech

Tl;DR The Online Safety Bill is a major piece of legislation intended to tackle the very difficult and troubling issues around social media. However, in its desire to remove the bad stuff, the Bill is setting up a legal and technical framework that mandates and enforces the automated suppression of online content and social media posts. The lack of a precise aim has enabled it to be moulded in a way that raises a number of concerns. Government Ministers will have unprecedented powers to define the content to be removed. They will be able to evade Parliamentary scrutiny through the use of Secondary Legislation. Social media platforms will have a wide discretion to interpret the rules and to determine whether content stays up or goes down. These factors, combined with the overall lack of precision in the drafting and the weak safeguards for users, means that the Bill is unlikely to meet human rights standards for protecting freedom of expression online.

UPDATED to reflect the Bill as Introduced to the House of Commons on 17 March 2022.

Read more: What's the point of the Online Safety Bill?